Every once in a while, I see something on the Internet that makes me just step back and marvel. As usual, I went on the Internet to see what I could find about the Soul Agents. I immediately uncovered a blog called The British Sound that is run by an Italian rock historian named Bruno Ceriotti. His most recent creation was what he called “The Soul Agents Day-by-Day Story”. He describes the Soul Agents as “undoubtedly one of the best British rhythm ’n’ blues bands of the early 60’s” and thanks 30 people who assisted him over the 20 years of research required to put this information together, among them Eric Clapton and Keith Emerson. This truly amazing history of the band can be found at: thebritishsound.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-soul-agents-day-by-day-story.html .
Running down something like this for a major rock band like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin would be difficult enough; but I can’t imagine where he even looked, a half-century later, to find out about every gig of the Soul Agents (18 in the month of August 1964 alone, to pick one month basically at random). Bruno Ceriotti noted that one club where the band performed regularly, the Marquee in Soho did not normally list the supporting acts in their monthly program listings, making it that much more difficult.
Bruno Ceriotti also uncovered the eight (!) line-up changes of the predecessor band the Lonely Ones (with photographs of two of them) and the personnel changes in the Soul Agents as well.
This is an example of the level of detail that Bruno Ceriotti put into his descriptions: “The Lonely Ones added a rhythm guitarist called Jim Sach (b. James Victor George Raphael Sach, Saturday, May 13, 1944, George, South Africa) known to friends as ‘Jimmy’ or ‘Jimbo’. Jim started to play guitar in the spring of 1961 with an unnamed High School band that included singer Kevin Finn (aka Danny Finn of The New Seekers’ fame). They only performed once, at the school concert. Jim left school in the summer of 1961 and formed a band called The Avengers with friends from school and the youth clubs, but gigs were few and far between so he jumped at the opportunity of joining The Lonely Ones in early 1962 changing his day job to accommodate the heavy schedule of gigs that The Lonely Ones were enjoying.”
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On June 6, 1966, Keith Emerson – later a founding member of the Nice and Emerson, Lake and Palmer – told Bruno Ceriotti that he was in the audience for a performance by the Soul Agents at the Marquee Club. As reported by Ceriotti on his blog: “The not yet famous organ God Keith Emerson was in the audience during one of the band’s Marquee shows that summer, and was duly inspired by Don Shinn’s act that featuring hilarious stage antics such as a habit of disappearing around the back of his organ to draw out weird sounds with the aid of a screwdriver, and also ‘treated’ adaptations of classical pieces such as an arrangement of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, one of the most popular of all piano concerti. Seeing Don Shinn do that, made Keith Emerson realise that he’d like to compile an act from what Don did.”
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In September 1966, the Soul Agents broke up; as reported by Bruno Ceriotti: “Don Shinn went to form his own band The Shinn, Ian Duck joined The MeddyEvils, Pete Hunt joined The Quik, and Dave Glover went to form The Loot (that included another former Soul Agent, Roger Pope).”
(May 2014)
